Batman's historic Hasankeyf district came alive as 10,000
people gathered for pop star Ajda Pekkan's concert on Sunday,
organized as part of daily Hürriyet's "freedom
train."

Hürriyet's freedom train has been traveling across
Turkey on a trans-Anatolian tour for the past month in an effort to
raise awareness about human rights among children and women. With
the motto "Freedom is our right," the train, composed
of 14 carriages, has been weaving in and out of 35 different
provinces hosting a range of activities. Over the weekend the train
arrived in the southeastern region of Batman, bringing with it top
names from Hürriyet's governing body, including
Hürriyet CEO Vuslat Doğan Sabancı, Editor in Chief
Ertuğrul Özkök, and other major writers from the
Doğan Media Group.

Thousands flooded in to Hasankeyf from neighboring districts
such as Şırnak, Mardin and Diyarbakır to watch a
historic performance by superstar Ajda Pekkan and supporting rock
band Yüksek Sadakat. "It is a great pleasure to be here
with you in this unique concert at such a historic and beautiful
location. We must not allow the 12,000 years worth of history that
sits in this location to be usurped by a dam," Pekkan said at
the opening of the concert. Quoting one of her songs "I was
born a free person I will leave a free person," Pekkan told
the crowd that Hasankeyf must live freely as well. "Even when
we leave this location tomorrow we will continue to take
responsibility for this area," Pekkan said.

Within the framework of the controversial subject of building a
dam in the area, 15,000-20,000 people who will be forced to move
will be carefully resettled. Vuslat Doğan Sabancı showed
her support to the people by wearing a t-shirt with the logo
"don't leave Hasankeyf under water."

On July 7, the European consortium involved in the Ilısu
Dam project announced a final denial of funding to Turkey on
environmental and cultural grounds. Environmentalists rejoiced at
the decision but the government it is determined to complete the
building of the dam.

On July 7, members of a European consortium involved in the
Illısu Dam Project, Germany, Switzerland and Austria said they
were pulling the plug on financial support for the Ilısu Dam,
leaving environmentalists anxiously waiting for Turkey to announce
its cancellation of the project.

The Environment Ministry, however, said it is determined to
complete the project.

The three countries' export guarantee agencies said Ankara
failed to meet a number of conditions they had set for awarding 1.2
billion euros worth of loan guarantees, which were frozen in
December.

"Despite some significant improvements, the requirements in the
areas of the environment, cultural heritage and resettlement could
not be fulfilled within the contractually stipulated time frame," a
joint statement had said.

However, the Environment Ministry described the decision as a
"political" one, saying that Turkey fulfilled all the
criteria necessary to start construction of the dam.

The ministry said there was also a joint experts committee
decision to release the credits for the project, especially on
resettlement, environment and finance. The experts committee was
charged with monitoring the fulfillment of the criteria. The
ministry said a new page was now open in the construction of the
dam.

The dam project is part of the government's plan to boost
economic prosperity in the country's less-developed
southeastern region, long troubled by ongoing clashes between
security forces and the outlawed-Kurdistan Workers' Party, or
PKK.

However Erkut Ertürk, the Hasankeyf campaign coordinator of
the Doğa Association, one of the leading critics of the
project, said the ministry's statement was doubtful because
the reports from the experts committee, who were in the field in
May, have not been released to the public yet. The
committee's reports were sent to the relevant countries and
the decision of the consortium came afterward, he said. "It
would not be possible to break such a huge contract without any
concrete evidence or for mere political reasons," he
said.

The Ilisu project calls for damming the Tigris River and
building a 1,200-megawatt power station as part of a $32 billion
irrigation plan for impoverished provinces in Turkey's
southeast. Turkey planned to relocate antiquities and monuments
from Hasankeyf, the region's only surviving city built during
the Middle Ages, with roots dating to the Assyrians. Critics of the
project, which would create a 300-square-kilometer lake, include
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for
literature in 2006. The dam would destroy 400 square kilometers of
river habitat that includes species such as the Euphrates
soft-shell turtle.

German, Swiss and Austrian institutions earlier announced they
were withholding their financing because the Turkish government had
failed to fulfill the criteria by December 2008. The agencies later
suspended the loans and gave Turkey a 180-day extension, which
expired July 6.